Fact check: Survey showing Labour support for republicanism is from 2019

By Press Association

June 4 2024, 8:40am

Sir Keir Starmer has said it has been his ‘driving mission’ to change the Labour Party (Jonathan Brady/PA)

The Conservative Party has claimed in a social media advert on Facebook that “six in ten Labour members want to abolish the monarchy”.

The advert also said that half of Labour Party members say they are bored, embarrassed or angry to sing the national anthem.

Evaluation

In September 2019, under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party, a survey of nearly 1,200 members suggested that 62% would prefer Britain to be a republic – with no monarch as head of state. That figure is not necessarily applicable to the Labour Party under the leadership of Sir Keir Starmer.

Facts

The advert clearly cites its source as a Yahoo! News article, and in a much smaller font size, lists the publication date of September 22 2019. This is not a recent survey.

The survey was carried out by YouGov on behalf of Mainstream. It asked 1,185 Labour Party members about their opinions on a range of topics, with the fieldwork carried out between September 17 and 20 2019.

One of the questions was “Do you think Britain should continue to be a monarchy, or should it become a republic?”

To that question 29% said it should remain a monarchy, 62% said it should become a republic and 10% said they did not know.

Another question was “If you were asked to join in the singing of the National Anthem, say at a sporting event, would you mainly feel…”

In response 22% said bored, 21% said embarrassed, 7% said angry. Together that adds up to 50%.

Out of the remaining members, 10% said they would be happy, 10% said proud, 28% said none of these and 1% said don’t know.

Sir Keir assumed leadership of the party in April 2020, following the departure of Mr Corbyn in the wake of the 2019 general election, and in the years since the party’s membership levels have changed.

The Labour Party’s membership has declined significantly since then. Accounts filed with the Electoral Commission in 2023 showed that the party had 407,445 members as of December 2022, nearly 25,000 less than the year previously and down from a peak of more than 532,046 members at the end of 2019.

More recent polling by YouGov, carried out in January 2024 across 2,089 Britons showed that 47% of the party’s 2019 voters – different to the membership — would prefer an elected head of state while 29% want the monarchy to continue. The remaining 24% said they did not know.

This, however, is not a majority and the party has made no mention of any changes to the monarchy in its campaigning.

Sir Keir has also talked about how he has “changed this party, permanently”.

Speaking on May 27 in Sussex, he went on: “This has been my driving mission since day one. I was determined to change Labour so that it could serve the British people, give them a government that matches the ambition they have for their family and community.”